Brazil
Brazil is a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has signed and ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), being one of the 44 listed countries needed to sign and ratify for the CTBT to enter into force.
Brazil operates two nuclear reactors and has been attempting to build more with no success. Thus far about US$750 million has been invested in Angra-3, but it remains just an excavated pit. Some mothballed components for Angra-3 are stored on site. The annual maintenance expenses for both reactors amount to about US$20 million. Construction of Angra-3 would require a time frame of about another 5 years and is estimated to cost an additional US$1.5 billion. The large investments already made are the main argument used by the defenders of nuclear power in order to convince the new Brazilian government to approve the completion of Angra-3.
Brazil developed a modest nuclear power program, enrichment facilities (including a large ultracentrifuge enrichment plant and several laboratory-scale facilities), a limited reprocessing capability, a missile program, a uranium mining and processing industry, and fuel fabrication facilities. Brazil was supplied with nuclear materials and equipment by West Germany (which supplied reactors, enrichment and reprocessing facilities), France, and the US.
Brazil also has supplies of uranium that it currently ships to the west for enrichment. They are about to start operating their own enrichment plant under IAEA safeguards.
It should also be noted that the Brazilian nuclear programme is one of the few left under military control.
In 1990 Brazil agreed to establish a bilateral inspection agency with Argentina to place both countries' nuclear material and facilities under their mutual supervision and ensure they were being used for peaceful purposes only, and they both signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Brazil is now a member of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (the Tlatelolco Treaty).
Read the profile on Brazil from the Model Nuclear Inventory (pdf), produced by the Reaching Critical Will project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
